“What about Moscow?” I ask.
He looks older suddenly. Not weak. Just older. Like the last five years have all caught up with him at once.
He closes his eyes for one moment and opens them again.
“Andrei Morozov was getting too strong,” he says. “Too certain he could move against everyone else and come out clean. I thought if pressure was applied in the right place, he’d be forced back. I thought it would weaken him.”
The words feel unreal in the room.
“You,” I say, because I need to hear it plainly, “You were the one who got Lev killed.”
“Yes,” he says. “But I did all of this for this family. The one I have kept alive while men like Andrei Morozov tried to turn all of us into property. I never wanted you to get married to Lev, but it was worse when he humiliated you and got away with it and I realized he would keep doing it, hold power over us.”
I shake my head. “You started this.”
“I tried to stop him,” he says. “I did it for you.”
“You started this,” I say. “Now don’t make it about me.”
The second time I say it, he flinches.
Just barely. But I see it.
Papa looks back at the screen, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower. “I thought I could use his son.”
For one second, I don’t understand. Then I do.
Roman.He means Roman.
My blood goes cold.
Papa continues, and now the words come slower, as if each one is being dragged out of him.
“Andrei had a son he did not trust. A son with enough anger in him to make people believe anything. Roman was already moving against him. Already building his own men, his own channels, his own name. So when Moscow began to crack, I let the blame turn toward him.”
My voice drops. “You betrayed Roman.”
His eyes look up at me.
Something flickers across his face, and then I understand.
He knows. He has known.
Papa sees the realization hit me.
For a second, neither of us speaks.
Then he says, carefully, “So you know too.”
The words go through me like ice.
Mama looks between us. “Know what?”
I don’t answer her. I can’t.
Papa looks at me like he wants to say something fatherly, something commanding, something that will put the room back where it belongs.
But there is no room anymore.